On the corporate causes of inequality across the rural-urban divide in northwest Arkansas

Olivia Paschal writes for The American Prospect from my neck of the woods, "The Modern Day Company Towns of Arkansas."  I'm going to excerpt some parts here that highlight the inequalities Walmart and Tyson Foods are driving, as those inequalities play out across the rural-urban divide.  

Tyson and the rest of the poultry industry have shaped Springdale’s economy and population, as well as the rural economy in the surrounding hills, over the last eight decades. Feed mills and processing plants line the highway; workers cluster in neighborhoods near the plants. The names of the poultry industry’s local entrepreneurs—Tyson, George, Parsons, and more—are attached to streets, parks, and facilities around the city, from John Tyson Elementary to Parsons Stadium, where the rodeo is held. Springdale is an industry town through and through.

One reason the poultry industry’s monopolization of Springdale flies under the radar as much as it does is because of another, flashier “company town” less than half an hour north. Bentonville, Arkansas, is home to the corporate headquarters of Walmart, and to several members of the company’s founding family, one of the richest families in the world.

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But the flip side is apparent in the region, too: workers stuck in cycles of poverty because of the companies’ low pay and lack of benefits, a culture of silence around criticisms or dissatisfaction with the corporations because of how much power they wield, the emptying out and pricing up of the rural hinterlands in service of regional urbanization driven by corporate investment. The infrastructure and development initiatives cater largely to upper-middle-class lifestyles, not to those working in factories, in warehouses, or on the retail floor. These contradictions are fundamental to company towns—amenities on the one hand, exploitation and undemocratic institutions on the other.

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The incalculable wealth of these two companies and their founding families has been extracted from other places, including their own rural hinterlands. It’s been well documented how the arrival of a Walmart impacts small businesses and the local economy in a given town, lowering wages and driving competitors out of business.

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Tyson’s business model, especially in rural markets where it can exert near-monopsony control over chicken farmers, is similarly exploitative: The company traps chicken farmers in contracts over which they have very little say, a practice for which it has come under scrutiny for years.

Another post that makes some similar points about the region is here.